Feathers, beaks, and the sick laughter of Murphy
by Maromar
Summary: A human wakes up and finds Gilda in his bed. Hilarity ensues. (Port of the story from FIMfiction)
1. Chapter 1

I woke up with my eyes closed as per usual. I could feel the morning sun spreading its gentle warmth on my face as I stretched my arms out, popping a few joints while fresh blood rushed through bone and sinew. It was a Saturday, I could sleep in if I wanted to without the folks giving me flak about it.

Not one to pass up such a chance, I turned, pulled my cover closer, and nuzzled my cheek into my warm pillow. A few feathers must have fallen out of it while I tossed and turned last night, I could feel the firm pin-like middles grazing my flesh.

Wait.

I don't have a feather pillow.

I groaned, both mentally and physically. If this was another of Devin's pranks I was going to kill him; or rather, get Mom to kill him. It is unwise for a teen just out of puberty to engage a college linebacker in glorious melee combat. Either way, trying to trigger someone's allergies was a low blow, even for him.

I cursed my brother with another groan. I had to get up before a reaction kicked in, the sooner I dealt with this, the sooner I could go back to sleep. I opened my eyes.

And through blurred vision, beheld a mass of white feathers uprange from a coat of brown... Fur?

"You really did go for the full nine," I whispered. The bed creaked as I sat up.

And then there was a beak.

And talons, very sharp, black talons with little detailed cracks in them at odd places. Closer to the head of the bed was a closed eyelid, bunkered around a patch of darkish-purple skin.

I frowned at the sight, who leaves a life-like griffin doll in one's bed as a prank? How the heck was it so warm? Was it plugged into the wall or something? The feathers probably weren't even real, explaining why I have yet t-

"Chii!"

I caught the sneeze in my throat.

_'Definitely authentic'_

The pain subsided quickly enough and I pressed my fingertip against the "griffon's" chest. A strong, steady pulse pushed back against me.

"Holy hell no, there's a griffon in my bed."

You will note the lack of an exclamation mark there, I had sense enough to whisper. I'd played enough _Heroes of Might and Magic_ to know what one of those things could do to fleshy, level one, corporeal beings like myself.

I had to get up slowly and exfiltrate unnoticed. If the thing woke up, I'd be bird feed for certain.

Slowly, carefully, I inched backwards at a mere millimeter-a-minute rate. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, fast is escaping predation.

_Creak_

_'Damn you, Mattressfirm!'_

Before I could void my bowels, the thing opened its beak, revealing a small, slick, red tongue before turning over directly on top of me.

It was uncomfortably warm and smothered my breath, only my left leg was free of the surprisingly fluffy mass, I could feel the steady rise and fall of its chest on my stomach, it was still asleep, meaning I was still alive. For the moment at least.

I tried to move my right leg. My knee was pressed against a firm pad that reminded me of our cat's. The claw at the end dragged down my shin as it shifted over me, a considerable amount of its bulk bore down on my shoulders and chest. The pad halted against my ankle just as one of the griffon's talons wrapped its way around my waist. I was faintly aware of a warm glob of drool penetrating the thin layer of hair on my head.

That was when God decided to let Murphy have his way with me.

A familiar pressure built up at the back of my throat, I bucked my legs up only to get them entangled with the griffon's own. Tried to cover my face with my hands to no avail; they were pinned by the griffons chest.

I sneezed.

I sneezed loud and hard, and in the span of a single moment, signed my own death warrant.

There was a squawk, and the talons around me snagged at my shirt a bit as they came loose, the pressure on my waist was nigh-instantly relieved and I could once again breath easily, though that was the least of my worries.

Its eyes, great dark things rimmed with yellow, bored into me. Its beak shut and it brushed an errant trail of saliva away with a talon.

_'Let us pray'_

_'Dear Lord, I am sorry for only coming to you when Murphy has me under his putrid armpit in a strangle hold, but hear your servant out this one last time. If you deliver me from the accused one's hand, I promise to never sneak bites in while the family is praying over dinner, even on macaroni and cheese nights. I promise to make no more Hitler jokes, no matter how funny they are. I promise to always change Oreo's water bowl in a timely manner and I will not weaponize my little sister's chemistry set in my crusade against the ants. Furthermore I-'_

"What are you doing in my bed?!"

My eyes snapped open, _'Did it just?'_

_'No, couldn't be. This is just my mind playing tricks on me,'_ I thought, this time squeezing my eyes shut hard enough to feel veins pulsating under the lids. I bit at my tongue about four times as hard. _'In fact, there is a good chance that I am already dead. I bet that it will take less than ten seconds for logic to catch up; I'll even count'_

_'Ten'_

_'Nine'_

_'Eight'_

"Well?" The same grouchy female voice struck my ears loud enough to make them ring. A cold, sharp thing pressed against my nose. With a very unmasculine squeal I forced my eyes open once more.

I stared cross-eyed at its curved yellow beak while my brain took a moment to reboot.

"Please don't eat me!"

There it was, I could always trust the old greymatter to get me out of thick and thin.

I threw myself backwards, managing to grab the pillow on the way. I grunted, slamming the back of my head into the wall, which was much closer to the bed than I remember, through the red dots in my vision and the sickening throbs racking their way through my brain and spine, I raised my only means of defense against the hulking beast of war in front of my face. It was torn away in a second.

"I'm not gonna eat you, dweeb! Just answer me!"

"You... You're not going to eat me?" My voice was barely above a whisper, my heart hammered against my chest.

The griffin grabbed my shoulders in its talons, tight, but not enough to cause lacerations; "No, but I might just gut you if you don't speak up."

Its voice was deadpan, I had no idea if it was serious or not but I knew that it couldn't hurt me, even if it tried.

If griffins could both exist _and_ talk, surely, answering my prayers would be a simple matter.

I lightly brushed its talons aside, stood up, walked a few paces and kneeled, facing the window. Gilda, to this day, still laughs at me, saying that I wept like a chick at that moment. To be honest though, all I can remember was how ecstatic I felt.

I stared straight into the sun peaking out from the clouds, casting its brilliant rays on my raised hands, palms face up.

"Praise God."


	2. Chapter 2

Dearest reader, this chapter is lacking in quality compared to the others, and is currently undergoing an edit, the chapter title will have ( V 2.0) slapped to the end of it when it's done, thank you.

A sharp pressure hit my right shoulder blade, a fuzzy speck of black and yellow invaded my peripheral vision.

"Wha-"

Before I could turn my head, everything degenerated into a multi-colored blur. There was a dull _thud_, a disorientating pain in my skull and I was given an excellent view of the ceiling; it seemed that, in addition to hiring a talking griffon hit-man, Devin replaced the lights with a pair of yellow, transparent crystal clusters that jutted out in sets of four. They crawled downwards like stalactites, the middle ones being longer than the surrounding three.

Devin definitely had too much time on his hands, I wondered if he dipped into his tuition fund to do this.

"Talk!"

It came out as half screech and half scream, like a person engaged in a shout-off with a bald eagle.

I scooted backwards towards the door, ignoring the rub-burn it inflicted on my bum. When I cleared enough space, I sat up, only for the griffin to be upon me in the _whump whump_ of two wing-beats. It, or rather, she, had no eyebrows to speak of; though I could see, her scowl from the purple spots around her eyes crinkling.

"The ceiling is pretty?" I stammered.

In my panic I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind and it was stupid. Panic and stupid are like conjoined twins.

She stared at me blankly for a second; her beak ajar. I felt the reaction before it came, akin to the moment when a baby falls on its head and just looks at you with huge eyes for a split second before releasing the floodgates. Except this time, the only tears would be coming from me as my still-beating heart was ripped out of a ruined chest cavity before my eyes.

Somewhere in the ninth circle of hell, I was certain that Murphy and Satan were laughing over a cheap pack of beer at my expense.

The next noise she made was all screech, like a raptor diving upon a poor defenseless salmon.

I bolted to my feet though I had a hard time standing at all, my joints turned to pudding. It was a small miracle that I had yet to soil my clothes.

Yea, because it would be oh so disrespectful if the morticians had to clean up an eviscerated body with wet pajamas to boot.

"I don't know!" I shook my head enough for the griffin's form to become a blur;

"Wait." I frowned; "What did you mean your bed?"

The griffin gave a two syllable _harrumph_ and leaned forward, poking me in the chest with every two or so words; "I mean _my _bed, in _my _room, in _my _house!" At that moment, everything she said became a dull, incoherent roar. Much like every other motivational speaker to grace a coerced audience.

'Not possible.'

Even then, as I backed up a step form each rib-bruising jab, my brain tried, and failed horribly, to comprehend my predicament.

_'Today is Saturday'_ I thought. _'Yesterday; I went to school, took a history test, came home, ate dinner, showered, pretended to understand my chemistry book, and slept. Unless there was some truth behind all those jokes about this year's senior prank being the contamination of the cafeteria's Salisbury steak supply with acid, I am pretty sure that nothing was amiss during each of my waking hours. Thus, there are scant few logical explanations for waking up next to a giant talking bird of prey.'_

My train of thought was interrupted by a sensation, or rather, a lack of sensation.

The griffin's talon hovered at a midpoint between my chest and its owner. A piece of blue shirt fabric was caught on it, fluttering in a breeze that I had yet to notice.

The griffin's eyes were focused to the side of me; just a second ago, it was all sound and fury, now it was the opposite. Common sense screamed for me to capitalize on this moment, to jump out of the nearest window, to do something other than see why I was offered this brief respite. Despite knowing so, I turned around.

Standing in the doorway was a taller griffin with a grey coat, speckled white. Its neck and head feathers were a pale shade of tan. It held a single white talon to its beak, letting it rest on the carpet only after locking a pair of green-rimmed eyes with my own.

Double griffins in the same hallucination. I questioned my own sanity.

It slipped past me and the other griffin on its way to the edge of the bed before settling down, talons parallel to each other, akin to the way that sphinx carvings were depicted.

"Gilda," It said in a deep, measured voice that came just above a whisper; "Who you let into your bedroom is no business of mine, however, I would ask that you at least keep whatever you're doing at five in the morning quiet. Your sister is still asleep and I would like to save "the talk" for a much later date than today"

I wasn't going to comment on that last bit.

Gilda on the other hand, flared her wings outwards; "I didn't let her into my room!" She stopped herself, took an audible breath, and folded her wings, though the left one twitched every now and then. She continued in a much softer tone; "I woke up to her _hugging_ me. Emperor knows where she came from, the windows and doors are all locked so there's no way she got in withou-"

I raised my hand, by then, I was sitting on the floor, legs crisscross applesauce elementary kid style.

"What?" Gilda snapped her head towards me with a frown.

"I'm a guy."

Her left wing twitched again, tail swishing to and fro like Oreo does before pouncing on someone. I decided against telling her that she was the one who had done the hugging.

The larger griffin coughed.

He looked to the right, towards the hallway with widened eyes, talons gripping on the little slope of wood at the foot of the bed. A moment's passing without griffin number three making an appearance seemed to satisfy him enough to continue.

He rose slowly and stepped off, stretching his wings with a yawn on the way. "The living room," He said, pointing to the door with his poofy white tail tip before brushing past us; "Sound tends to carry from this room to the others."

The ceiling was incredibly high, Shaq O'Neal would likely have no problem standing on his own shoulders two times over in it. We stepped forward, four paws, four talons and two feet, yet only one set of creaking steps.

It was weird; the griffins were taller than me, at least, when laying down in a bed horizontally. Assuming that they were more lion than bird, they were heavy-set as well. Perhaps it had something to do with weight distribution; I was all vertical while they had four points and a greater area to walk on.

I followed behind the male griffin and Gilda as a sense of dread crawled it's way up my spine on wretched, freezing, spider legs. As much as I would like to believe that this was some sort of prank, I simply could not prove it as such. I recognized absolutely nothing about my surroundings. The walls were a rock-like grey color and padded to boot. I pushed on one with my thumb and it gave a bit, like a gym mat. Visibility was low, the nearest source of light came from behind, and was being partially eclipsed by the top of Gilda's frowning face. I could make out a few doors here and there, as well as what looked like claw-marks on the padding; much like the ones Oreo leaves on the couch, though much larger.

And then there was a picture frame. I stopped, barely feeling a hard beak jab into the midsection of my spine.

Four griffins. two of which looked like younger versions of the ones bordering me. They were bunched under what I guessed was a marble fountain with a giant fish, body curved upwards into a "C" shape with water streaming downwards into the base. The mini-Gilda was dead center, a black and red chick hung onto her back with its talons resting on her head. To the left was papa griffin(?) and to the right was a red furred, white feathered one who had Gilda's side in a perpetual embrace. It was the last straw, the last cannon shell needed to shatter my already flimsy wall of denial

_'No.'_

_'No no no no no no no!'_

I squinted and tried to change the image with my mind, tried to bend the tall pine-trees into the oaks that grew outside of my home. Tried to will the feathers and beaks and talons away in place of Mom; with her subtle brown skin and black hair that gave off a nice sheen in the light due to her never missing a day of beauty products.

I was poked in the back again.

"What's wrong with you?" Gilda didn't squint at me in the dimness, probably didn't have to.

I shook my head, "Nothing, my apologies." Internally, I screamed.

_'I can't prove that this is real' _I thought, more hope than substance, It was so _vivid_; from the cool floor on my feet to the smell of thin air with a hint of ash...

A lucid dream. It had to be. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. No need to panic; this would soon be over, I would wake up to a nice Saturday morning, tell my family that I loved them and then laugh about this experience. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

The form in front of me coalesced from a hazy silhouette into the taller griffin that led us out before as we passed by a pair of windows; I followed through two sharp right turns. There was another light source around the second corner which led to a wide space with two windows on either side of a brown door, half hidden by an "L" formation of three sofas bordered by a fireplace to the left. The ceiling was even higher than the hallway and had a skylight at the very top, a fresh, almost free-flowing feel permeated the room. Like the one you get from stepping outside on a summer day.

He motioned me over to the small part of the "L" while the two griffins sat on the largest piece of furniture together, the male fiddled with a strange, lamp-like thing with the same type of crystals on Gilda's ceiling while the she-griffin stared cast me a glare that dared me to even blink in the wrong manner.

As his talon slid up the lamp shaft, the crystals gave an increasingly intense glow until all resisting pockets of darkness were eradicated.

"Let's start simple, my name is Norward and this," he said, motioning open talons to his right; "is Gilda. Our surname is "Of Golden Tides" "

I swallowed, getting the last bits of dryness out of my throat.

"Charles Burke."

The conversation went on, with Norward moving from simple questions like "how do you feel" and "are you hungry" in a calm voice that somehow drew a few smiles from the both of us, eventually tapering off into more personal one's. Parents, siblings.

Nationality.

"America?" He leaned forwards making a small creak; "Is that one of the Zebrican Islands or a sub-state of the Crystal Empire?"

I shook my head, prompting a frown from him, he got up and disappeared behind another hallway to the far right; "Hold on a minute.".

I heard the muffled sound of drawers opening and closing amid rustling paper. He was back soon enough with a scroll held in his tail which he moved the crystal-stick/lamp to make room for. Unfurling it across half of the table around the couches, he asked, "Can you see the general shape of America here?"

I humored him; there were three large continents, two moderately sized ones and multiple outlying islands in between and around them. At the very center was one of the large ones, labeled: **Equestria** connected to it above was: **The Frozen North** and to the South-East across an expanse of sea laid **Griffonia**, I didn't bother to read the other place-names, skimming instead for my own.

No results, as expected. I shook my head.

"Odd." Norward scratched at his neck while Gilda leaned in a bit, I couldn't tell if she wore a curious frown or a disbelieving one, I assumed both.

"Are you a mage or from a family of 'em? A teleportation spell gone awry perhaps?"

He cocked his head to the side when I responded in the negative again; "Some of the books where I come from mention magic and there was a big hype about witches when America was just a colony, but I haven't seen or heard of it being performed. Not in living memory at least."

"Ponyfeathers." Gilda said; "Magic is half of what makes your heart pump, it lets plants grow, it's what heals you when you get cut- I mean," She waved her two front limbs in the air "It's in _everything._"

I stood up, leaving a Charles-rump-sized crater in the couch that lasted much longer than I anticipated. The light from the window had grown in intensity while the lamp thing lost its glow. Either Norward had shut it off, or the crystal mechanism didn't work in the presence of direct light. It didn't matter really, I could probably make it work any way that I wanted to, as soon as I figured how to warp the dream.

My surroundings were pretty solid, it would probably be hard to change because my mind already painted a consistent picture, it would be like adding "threeve" between four and five to the base ten number sequence. Maybe if I consciously thought about something I had yet to receive "visual" confirmation of.

"May I go outside for a quick second, please?"

"I don't see why not." Norward stretched and led me through a short trek into another hallway; "You'll get a better view from the roof," he explained when I asked why he was leading me there instead of the front door.

The stairs were narrow and went up at sharp incline, never ceasing until the top of my head brushed with the ceiling. I sneezed twice on the way and was coming upon a third when he stopped, feathers littered the stairs in abundance. I spied a square door that no-doubt over Norward's shoulder; he moved to push it outwards.

"Wait!" he looked back at me like I had a tapeworm growing from my forehead. I bit my tongue, feeling warmth rush to my cheeks. That was a lot louder than I meant for it it be.

"May I?"

He nodded, moving aside and then behind me to make room.

I swallowed, grasped the handle, closed my eyes and tried to visualize something so ludicrous that it would _have_ to come from a dream:

_'Pitch black despite light coming in through the windows'_ I squeezed my eyes a little harder for luck; _'ACDC doing a kids tunes concert with pink strobe-lights under the shadow of three moons made of cheese. In the midst of it all; Sephiroth standing from within the hatch of a Leman Russ tank flanked by two velociraptors ridden by George Washington and Morgan Freeman.'_

_'Yes, this image pleases me'_

The door creeked. I opened my eyes as soon as I felt ground that was not part of the stairs.

A clear blue sky and a gush of cold air that stung my lungs with each inward breath. The roof was grey and sloped, covered in chunks of rocky material. Birdsong that I had never heard made itself known in the distance and a cloud floated directly above my head, near enough to reach out and touch.

_'Don't panic'_ I repeated to myself with every step until I reached and sat down on the edge. The sun was just above another lower cloud formation, mercilessly illuminating the area around me; mountains connected by wooden suspension bridges to my left and right that looked like they had their tops carved off and replaced with loosely packed groups of mostly white and red and brown, flat-roofed buildings. Far below were more that appeared to be straight out of a model-city set, arranged orderly, into shapes that accommodated wide streets between each clustering of homes.

Figures of every shape and color other than human moved along the roads that spider-webbed through the array and met together into a straight line, making its way into a thicket of misty trees for as far as I could see.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

I hardly acknowledged Norward, or the fact that Gilda had followed us up a short while after.

There had to be some way that I could prove the falsity of it all. A seconds pause, then a grin that realized manifest destiny on my face.

"Hey." I said, the detachment in my own voice scared me a bit. "If I jump, do you think I'll wake up?"

He may have said something that started with an "n" but I had no way to know for certain. I leaned forward, past the safety of the ledge.

There was the sound of rushing air.


End file.
